Rethinking Growth Strategies

Abstract

This chapter focuses on growth because we can all agree that achieving sustained poverty reduction around the world will be practically impossible unless economic growth is achieved in poor countries. In addressing rethinking economic growth strategies I will explain in greater detail that the kind of certainty and consensus that existed in the mid-1990s about the appropriate policy framework for economic growth has almost disappeared. And it is not clear what is going to replace it. I therefore make the case for a particular way of thinking about designing growth strategies. These ideas are still in their early stages of development and have been undertaken jointly in work with a number of my colleagues at Harvard, including, most significantly, Ricardo Hausmann, Lant Pritchett and Andres Velasco. I would like to acknowledge their contribution upfront.